300

Victoria suffered just under 300 deaths in road crashes in 2010. That’s a tragedy nearly every day, but it’s still a small fraction of the toll exacted by motor vehicles 40 years ago, when the road toll peaked at 1061 in 1970 (at at time when there were fewer people and many fewer cars). I couldn’t find a graph for Victoria but here is one for Australia as a whole, showing the same pattern with a slight lag as other states followed Victoria.

Anyone my age or older will remember that, after decades of accepting steadily increasing death rates as the price of mobility, Victorian governments of both political persuasions finally took the politically courageous step of enforcing higher safety standards – first seat belts and automative design rules, then effective techniques to catch and convict speeders and drink drivers, then helmet laws and more stringent license testing, among many others. Victoria’s interventions were eventually followed by other governments in Australia and elsewhere, but the lags are such that Victoria has gone from having some of the most dangerous roads in the world to having some of the safest. Nevertheless, and not surprisingly, these steps aroused plenty of opposition at the time, and the opponents were able to produce supposed experts to back their arguments.

What might seem more surprising is that even after four decades in which their claims have been refuted beyond any reasonable doubt, the same experts are still pushing the same discredited lines, and still finding a ready audience. With a closer look at the experts and their audience, this fact is perhaps less surprising, but still requires some explanation.

The arguments against road safety interventions are of two kinds, though they often intertwine. The first involve arguments against specific interventions, for example
* Seat belts increase the risk of death because people may be trapped in their cars rather than being “thrown clear”
* Variance in speed of vehicles matters more than average speed so we shouldn’t enforce speed limits
* Speed cameras/breath test machines are unreliable and give lots of false positives
* Restrictive vehicle design rules will raise costs, leading people to buy older/cheaper cars and reducing safety
None of these arguments stand up well to scrutiny, but I don’t propose to discuss them here. I’ll set up a sandpit for people who want to argue about specific cases.

The second is a general argument, purporting to show that any regulatory intervention to increase safety will be ineffective (although it is sometimes applied inconsistently by people who oppose some interventions but not others). The central idea is that any reduction in risk below the level that would arise in the absence of intervention will lead people to take more risks, wiping out (or, in some versions, more than wiping out) the first round benefits.

This kind of argument has been advanced (apparently without much cross-acknowledgement) by economists of whom the most notable is Sam Peltzman, under the name ‘rebound effect’, and by geographers, including John Adams, under the name “risk homeostasis”.[1] Adams in particular likes to cite “Smeed’s Law” a statistical relationship first estimated in 1949, which showed that, as the number of vehicles increased, the number of road deaths increases, but less than proportionally. Victoria fitted the Smeed’s Law pretty well until 1970, after which deaths fell sharply while the number of vehicles continued to rise. Nevertheless, Adams has continued to claim that both Smeed’s Law and risk homeostasis fit the data.

Of course, it’s not unusual to see academics pushing their pet theories long after the evidence has turned against them, and some degree of stubbornness in the face of contrary evidence is desirable – sometimes the disconfirming data is wrong, or is driven by a run of chance events. And, as anyone who has followed such debates will know, it’s always possible to tweak the data until you get the result you want. But you would think by now that the stunning success of Victoria’s interventions would have produced at least some admission that the theory and the data don’t fit too well. Not a bit of it. Adams, Peltzman and others are still behaving as if Victoria’s interventions had produced the increase in fatalities they predicted, and, as I mentioned, still getting plenty of airplay from prominent thinktanks.

The explanation of course is that Adams and Peltzman are libertarians, and the thinktanks that back them are similarly inclined. Peltzman checks just about all the US boxes – professor of economics at Chicago, fellow of AEI, Cato. Adams isn’t such a joiner, but he is clear enough on the political implications of the argument. For example, in explaining persistent belief in the effectiveness of seat belt laws, Adams writes

Why should the government be so assiduously promoting and inflating this myth? It has ready access to the numbers that disprove it. I offer a simple, cynical, explanation: it feeds the larger myth of the efficacy of government.

There are obvious reasons why libertarians would like to believe that road safety laws are ineffective and that global warming is a hoax or fraud.[1] It is of course, possible to argue that, regardless of the benefits of seat belts, people should not be forced to wear them, but that argument doesn’t work for speed traps, RBT, and so on, unless you want to try the extreme Coasian view that such matters should be settled by voluntary agreement (Adams gives this view a nod in his paper Risky Business). Issues like road safety and global warming make it clear that our everyday actions such as driving a car impinge on each other in critical ways that can’t be resolved through the spontaneous operation of market mechanisms.

Sometimes, as with road safety, there is little alternative to direct interventions of the kind pioneered by Victoria. In other cases, as with global warming there is a choice between direct regulation (specifying permissible designs for all kinds of electrical equipment for example) and measures like carbon taxes and emissions trading which, while relying on government action in the first place, leave a lot of the hard work to market processes. A sensible libertarianism would seek to identify the latter cases and present arguments for market-oriented mechanisms.

Sadly, while there are individuals with libertarian inclinations who argue in this way, the libertarian movement as a whole has chosen the path of magical thinking, hoping that if they can keep coming up with debating points, problems like global warming will go away. The libertarian think tanks in the US and Australia are uniformly delusionist on climate change, as are the great majority of individual commentators who self-identify as libertarians[3] [4].

I suspect (and hope) there may be quite a few libertarians who aren’t that comfortable with the anti-science wishful thinking displayed on these issues, but prefer not to pick a fight with their fellow libertarians on an issue that may appear peripheral to their own concerns. I would urge any such to think again. Once intellectual standards are debased in this way, the damage cannot be contained. Bad arguments are accepted because they produce comfortable conclusions, or because they are put forward by political allies. This works (in a way) as long as you can assume that all the correct answers are known, having been revealed in some sacred text or another. But they imply (and reveal in the case of climate change) a total incapacity to deal with anything new. It’s not surprising, as I mentioned not long ago, that the free-market right hasn’t come up with any new ideas in decades. Like other movements that began with a radical openness to new ideas, they have become locked into a dogmatic orthodoxy, immune from empirical refutation.

fn1. Also put forward by psychologist Gerard Wilde.

fn2. It would be similarly convenient for socialists to believe that people aren’t motivated by economic incentives (or wouldn’t be if their consciousness was properly raised) – a large part of the disaster of communism was the attempt to act on this belief.

fn3. I should say that I haven’t seen anything specific from Peltzman on climate change. But, if he believes that the thinktanks with which he is prominently associated are badly wrong on a major scientific and policy issue, he ought to say so.

fn4. I am not interested in hearing from libertarians who conform to this stereotype, but I will establish a sandpit for those who feel impelled to restate their allegiance to tribal orthodoxy (with or without hedges and qualifications). On the other hand, if anyone wants to self-identify as a libertarian who accepts mainstream science as represented by, say, the IPCC or all the scientific academies in the world, I will certainly be interested.

There is another aspect to this John. In the endless debate of cost effectiveness public vs private transport the costs of injury are rarely discussed. UQ made a reasonable effort to quantify it, I have seen other studies that support it, the cost is $17B per year not including the pain and grief.

I am more-or-less a libertarian and I certainly agree that the safety regulations have been effective. And I don’t know personally anyone who believes otherwise, though there is a not-unreasonable argument about bike helmets.
The US has had nothing like the reduction we have had, partly because they are unwilling to have RBT or to enforce seat belt laws but also because, going back to Ralph Nader, the prevailing philosophy on road safety has been to engineer cars better rather than to change behavior. It’s interesting to speculate how many would still be alive if Nader had used his strong influence to push in the other direction.
JQ I think your view of libertarians contains quite a lot of straw. There are ( I am sure) people who reject any regulation of behavior but a belief in maximum freedom from government actually cover a pretty wide range of attitudes. Rather like social democrats.
Very few, one either side of the spectrum, believe in absolutes though it suits some (on both sides) to pretend that their opponents do.

Nice switch JQ. I thought the subject was road safety.
I have, many times, said at Catallaxy that I accept the consensus scientific view on AGW.
I think that some of the scientists have damaged themselves and their cause by behaving like politicians – which they do badly.
Anyway, I said at Catallaxy the other day that the argument about AGW has become pointless – no-one is going to convince anyone to change his or her mind – here or at Catallaxy or anywhere else.

“On the other hand, if anyone wants to self-identify as a libertarian who accepts mainstream science as represented by, say, the IPCC or all the scientific academies in the world, I will certainly be interested.”

*raises hand*

In fact I’m over on Catallaxy right now trying to get someone to accept some basic scientific facts.

In case anyone is interested, I do believe a carbon tax can be justified by libertarian principles. See here:

In the case of AGW, a cost (and risk of much greater costs) is being imposed on the world at large by the emissions of various people and industries. However, because this cost is not being solely borne by the emitters, they benefit at everyone else’s expense. That goes against the user-pays ethos of libertarianism, not to mention violating economic efficiency.

So in that sense, a carbon tax is a Pigouvian tax, correcting the market imbalance that exists. It reduces distortion rather than increasing it.

That’s fine Ken, happy to go back to road safety now. As you well know, the great majority of the Catallaxy crew are reflexively opposed to all kinds of road safety measures, and argue about this in exactly the same way as wrt global warming. That is, a combination of silly talking points and selective citation of the minority of studies that come out with negative conclusions on an particular issue.

And it’s not just Catallaxy – CIS, Miranda Devine, and many others take the same line.

A significant part of the reduction in deaths over this period must also be attributable to improvements in the safety and design of vehicles driven not by regulation, but by consumer preferences and the market. And as people become wealthier, they can afford to purchase cars with more safety features.

That is not to deny that some of the reduction in road deaths is due to regulation. But I think the figures may exaggerate the case somewhat.

Another issue is that to the extent that costs of accidents are socialized, this creates moral hazard. For example, if helmets and seat belts were not compulsory those who were injured would still impose costs on society through the public health system and compulsory insurance and the like. Increased freedom is only sustainable if individuals incur more of the costs of their own poor choices. Socializing more risks requires increased regulation to offset moral hazard.

I don’t think that is right about the great majority of the “Catallaxy crew” JQ.
CIS has not said much at all about AGW or road safety so far as I have seen. IPA certainly is anti-AGW.
Both the left and the right stereotype those on the other side, which I think is a pity. Many times in history bad things have happened because evil beliefs have been bundled up and attributed to another social group.

@ken n
Just be patient Ken – there will be a bite…someone telling me I have things all wrong and that its the government that stuffs things up and if only we shot allm politicians, removed all regulation…we would be delivered, not to the wild west frontier of being ruled by bikie gangs, but to Nirvana…

I’m a bit of a libertarian on this issue actually. I certainly don’t doubt the mainstream scientific (or your economic) opinion on AGW or the efficacy of regulations in reducing the road toll, but I oppose seatbelt and helmet laws nonetheless. In fact, I would oppose these laws even if failing to wear a seatbelt/helmet was shown to be certain to cause death.

My objection is purely a philosophical one. I don’t believe society has the moral right to force a rational adult to be safe. In fact, I find utilitarian arguments against helmet/seatbelt rules distasteful. I prefer to bite the bullet and accept more fatalities in exchange for less totalitarianism.

Drink driving and speeding laws on the other hand, are completely different. Society absolutely has the right to punish anti-social and dangerous behaviour. In fact, I would add something else that should be policed; following distance (esp. on highways). I think speed cameras should watch the gap between cars and fine tail-gaters. This would require only a software update on existing hardware, and would help reduce the toll enormously.

Ho yes, one remembers well the old days, circa nineteen seventy. Badly designed roads with blind corners, souped up cars dragging off cops in the abscence of radar traps, driving blotto socially desirable in some quarters, let alone tolerated and so on.
What a shock, the day we were out for a sunday spin and got nailed with our first radar trap. Then the shock when breathalysers came a few years later: was a man not permitted even the consolation of a “so-shall” drink with mates at the local tavern, as one convalesced from the myriad injustices inflicted on one by women, bosses, social security etc.
Driving cabs in the early eighties, it struck me as ridiculous that I would be taking home people who would have stayed relatively sober anyway, whilst the hard core confederates who should have been in the cab, were getting as full and still driving home blotto, as a game, using the rat routes.
In Adelaide we nowadays have deaths down to about 150 people pa against 360 pa odd, forty years agom thge trend indicated by prof Quiggin.
I think a contributing factor could be the limiting of cigarette smoking at pubs- may as well stay at home with a slab, if you’re a drinker (which I haven’t been for a couple of decades), along with heavy duty surveillance that seems to go on now, at the once sacred sanctuary that was an old fashioned pub.

rog, I said nothing about IPA except that they are anti-AGW.
And you are using the old “linked with” journalism trick. IPA is not “promoted” at Catallaxy – sometimes it is mentioned or quoted.
There seems to be a view that if anyone on a site mentions something or someone that amounts to a wholesale endorsement. JQ is making the same mistake quoting one article by one person in a CIS publication. I do not agree with Buckingham though I am happy for CIS to publish his views.
Catallaxy, CIS and IPA carry a diversity of views. I prefer that to an insistence that everything published sticks to a party line

OT. I agree that the case that compulsory bike helmets did not reduce head injuries seems wrong.
The stronger anti-helmet argument is that they discourage cycling – particularly among women – and the “health cost” of that outweighs the head injury risk. The British Medical Association looked at the issue a few years ago and came to that conclusion.
Compulsory helmets also makes schemes like the Paris Velib just about impossible.
I am a cyclist and always wear a hemet whether or not it is compulsory in the country I am in.
But it is not a cut and dried issue – as the fact that Autralia and NZ are the only countries with helmet laws suggests.

Ken, many of the posts are from IPA associates and often include a ref. to the IPA. I really can’t tell the difference the views expressed on Catallaxy, IPA and News Ltd. – they often include the tag something along the line “excellent article from IPA/WSJ/Australian”

While I wouldn’t call myself a libertarian on the Political Compass test I come way down in the left quadrant, showing strongly libertarian tendencies. However, I draw quite a strong line between being libertarian and ideological libertarianism.

I would contend that a truly libertarian society, one that essentially devolves most decisions back to the individual, must also be a fundamentally equal society in terms of access to resources, both physical and cultural.

The fact that both our major parties are authoritarian rather than libertarian is reflected in the law they pursue. While their purpose is to control, as a libertarian society their intent would be to enable with laws that, for example, penalise excessive income differentials or set targets for housing affordability. Instead we get the Northern Territory intervention and funding for wealthy private schools.

On the other hand I see ideological libertarianism as the abandonment of existential reality for the pursuit of libertarian ideals that, as with most ideologies, seeks to define the existential reality by sheer force of erudition. This would be the ‘think tank’ version, normally pursued venomously against all evidence and for ulterior motives that one can only surmise beggar belief.

I would label it the “no-control” version of libertarianism, the sort that one may occasionally wish to practice on others, but in reality would not want practiced on oneself. Being totally done over is not a nice feeling.

This does tend to leave me in an ambivalent position on road safety, supporting such initiatives as RBT’s as an equalising factor (we’re safer to assume none of us are drunk), supporting initiatives such as vehicle standards and seat belts on the evidence, but more skeptical on the application of speed restrictions, again particularly in places like the Northern Territory.

As to AGW, to anyone who understands the philosophy of science, that is, how science works, would have no trouble with both uncertainty and ambiguity while accepting, as the majority of world scientists do, that there is no better theory to fit the existing facts.

The seatbelt argument was one that affected me very directly – twice, in fact. The first time was when we installed seat belts in the back, where the “seat” was one long bench. I didn’t crack my skull, and I didn’t lose my sister. My mother got whiplash (as did I, most likely), but that is a heck of a lot less painful than what my aunt’s family went through when hit head-on (these crashes pre-date things like the Fraser Gvt, but the exact dates don’t matter). In my aunt’s family the only person who remained in the car, post-crash, was my uncle who could see as the driver that due to the on-coming idiot, a crash was a certainty; he braced by placing his hands on the car roof and pushing as hard as he physically could, and somehow he remained seated – or perhaps he was just plain lucky and bracing didn’t make any difference. Either way, three children and an adult hit the pavement after moving through glass windows or the front windscreen. My uncle was the least injured of all of them, by a long long long shot. This head-on was on the open highway.

The argument about seatbelts being shoved down our throats by governments intent on restricting our freedoms doesn’t garner much support among either of our families. How about the freedom not to be cleaned up by a P-plater who injures you more severely than himself, simply because he sees the crash he has instigated as about to happen, and prepares for the impact. Or the dickhead who can’t leave the drink at home and takes it onto the open highway? How about the freedom of not having those incompetents anywhere near the roads?

Enough of the subjective. It is always worthwhile having some kind of argy-bargy about whether this measure or that is an effective expenditure of “tax-payers’ money” or not. The rot sets in when the extremist views are trotted out (by the free press, often enough) as though they are a) cognisant of the facts, b) are experts in the subject matter, and c) not extremists but rather the “other side of the debate”. Debates on public policy issues surely don’t have to be so dichotomous, especially where the obvious parameters of significance are from a spectrum of values, rather than just yes/no type values. Actually, this post has in a way reminded me that 40 years of political argument concerning policies has not changed much at all.

PS: Liberty for the individual gets more difficult as more individuals pop up. How will libertarians handle the encroachment of so many other people? Ignore them? [Guffaw!]

This is getting silly, JQ and rog. You are trawling through websites looking for evidence of “wrong thoughts” with which to condemn the organisations behind them.
Aha! Found one – that proves they are evil.
No thanks, I’m not playing.

You are quite correct about seat belts DO. The rest of your comment builds a straw man.
I repeat what i said earlier:
“Both the left and the right stereotype those on the other side, which I think is a pity. Many times in history bad things have happened because evil beliefs have been bundled up and attributed to another social group.”

@Donald Oats
Happy new year Donald Oats!
Seatbelts are a great idea and everyone should wear them. I wear one whenever I get in a car. Auto-makers should be forced to install them in every new vehicle made. It’s fantastic that your family was saved from serious injury by this marvelous invention.

But.

None of this gives the government the moral right to punish adults who choose not to wear one.

What’s this I’ve read from back in the thread: “IPA, Catalepsy, etc carry a divergence of opinion not present at some sites” (not verbatim).
wft…(rofl)…one tree does NOT a forest make, any more than a biased assertion, a fact creates..

A candidate for the NSW state election believes (a) there should be effectively no police action on hoon behaviour on the roads and (b) all speed limits should be instantly removed, leaving individuals to decide what speed they think is safe on a given road, and then, over time, the sum of all those judgements would give you the correct speed limit for that road. The mind boggles on what would be the road toll while this assessment was being done – this seems to me often the case with the “get rid of all regs” libertarian theories.

Ken, you initiated the topic of the IPA by implying that the IPA have no opinion on road safety and then when presented with a link to the IPA expressing an opinion on road safety you say that “you are not playing.”

Since the multi pronged approach to road safety which continues despite deteriorating roads and increasing vehicles there has been a significant drop in road deaths although it is still high. There is no doubt that high levels of visible policing keeps speed down and concentration up. The laws about not using mobile phones while driving are also well founded and limitations on the number of passengers in P plate cars are also a good idea. The free market would not have improved safety standards by itself but required governments to insist but the improved design has helped as much as limitations on the freedom to behave anti-socially.

All of these things impinge on individual freedom because the results of that individual freedom means bad results for others. The police having to inform relatives that someone has died because they as an individual decided to drink and drive or to not wear a seatbelt or both, results in trauma for those officers who have this as their job and the ambulance crews who attend accidents. If the individual doesn’t die then the costs to the community and the family of the individual are enormous (even if it does raise GDP).

This is like Climate change where lots of individuals make lots of decisions which may not impact on them directly (or may) but where their individual action results in poor futures for others.

It’s the “I’m all right Jack” mentality which beleives we are isolated beings making rational decisions rather than emotional, self involved individuals, who fail to see beyond our particular cacoon. The recent study which found that those on the right are hard wired with larger sections of their brain devoted to emotional reactions and therefore impervious to rational argument sounds very convincing to me.

Having researched these areas a bit I think there is some evidence of a rebound effect from safety equipment in cars. Its just moral hazard – people feel safer and take more risks. My understanding is that while the number of accidents has increased the number of serious accidents – deaths – has fallen. (There is also claimed to be adverse selection effects with bad drivers choosing safe cars like Volvos and then deriving like lunatics!)

On traffic density the more cars on the road the more accikdents occur. The evidence for Japan and the US is very clear. But there is again a squabble about whether because speeds slow with more congestion you get less serious accidents. Really need a good study in Australia of the insurance claims data – we have very poor information about the causes of car accidents in this country.

The evidence is that the death toll on the road has fallen. The factors that determine that are disputed but I think most agree that the drink driving laws have had a huge impact.

I think the attitudes to climate change at Catallaxy are hopelessly hypocritical. Many people who post there say they endorse AGW theories but attack them on every possible occasion with objections that have been refuted many times.

Ken N I agree with John. How about a post that simply endorses the conventional science of climate change and which clearly identifies the status of delusional theories in relation to the consensus?

None of this gives the government the moral right to punish adults who choose not to wear one.

Why not? If we accept, for the sake of argument, that your claim has some foundation, it seems perfectly reasonable to apply the same principal claim to other situations of the same logical class as the seatbelts situation. To set up the basic argument, somewhat stylised:

* Death or serious injury from car crashes may be significantly reduced if car passengers and driver wear seatbelts.
* Government(s) introduce policy that makes seatbelts compulsory in all vehicles.
* Government(s) want car passengers to wear the provided seatbelts.
* Government(s) therefore make it compulsory to use them.
* Government(s) enforce compliance by punishing non-compliance, usually by way of fines.

At this point you would say: But. This does not give the government the moral right to punish adults who choose not to wear seatbelts.

A more abstract version is the following:
* Horrible thing A may be significantly reduced if people do B when in situation C.
* Government(s) want people to do B when in situation C.
* Government(s) therefore make it compulsory to do B, when in situation C.
* Government(s) enforce compliance by punishing non-compliance, usually by way of fines.
At this point I guess you would raise the objection: “But. This does not give government(s) the moral right to punish adults who do not comply.”
Which may or may not be true. However, what if a waiver scheme applied? You could sign a waiver once only, saying that you understand the risks of not doing B when in situation C, and that you therefore are willing to freely accept the consequences of your decision not to comply. It seems that this would work for any other class that satisfies the basic schema outlined above, in terms of A, B, and C.

One difficulty though, is that your choice of non-compliance infringes upon other people having the choice of avoiding consequences that may result from your non-compliance. To illustrate, let us take a similar case, namely the one of speeding. Here goes:
As for the seatbelts case, A = extra fatalities or more severe injuries; B = stay under the advised speed limit; C = advised speed limit in effect. In this case driving over the speed limit is the equivalent of not wearing seatbelt. Looks good, right? You could sign a waiver, saying that you understand and accept the consequences (of driving above the speed limit), and therefore you are not to be fined for “failure to comply”.
The problem is that if you drive over the speed limit, especially by a markedly large amount, you subject others to the consequences of the risks that you, personally, are willing to assume. A car crash, all other things being equal, causes more extensive injuries the greater the speed of the colliding vehicle(s). How does your right to assert that you accept the risks, get translated into another person’s right not to be hit by a vehicle travelling above the speed limit?

Moral rights get quite murky here; especially so, because on the one hand we are discussing a statistical argument involving reduction in harm, and on the other the right of a single individual to say no, include me out.

” Ken N I agree with John. How about a post that simply endorses the conventional science of climate change and which clearly identifies the status of delusional theories in relation to the consensus?”
hc one of the many annoying things about all this is the way people are expected to pass some kind of purity test and to repeat their affirmation of it frequently.
I accept the consensus science on AGW. I have said that many times. You want me to denounce the non-believers. I will not do that, beyond saying that I think they are wrong. I am glad that some do not accept the majority view – I say the same about socialism, extreme free-market views and many other things. That is I suppose why I lean towards the libertarian end of the spectrum
None of us here or at Catallaxy or Deltoid have the science or the data to judge whether the AGW theories are right or wrong. So we are arguing about which scientists to believe. I accept the views of the majority. I am glad that there are some who are courageous enough to dissent. I do not think they are deluded, denialist or evil.
The really foolish part of all this is that what we think or say or believe does not matter one jot. Nothing turns on our belief. I am not even sure that the belief of anyone in Australia matters.
I still agree with Rudd’s policy before Copenhagen – we should no no more and no less than the rest of the world.
My guess is that the world will not agree to do anything significant about carbon emissions so our efforts will be best spent on planning adaptation strategies.
I will repost this at Catallaxy.

“Ken, you initiated the topic of the IPA by implying that the IPA have no opinion on road safety and then when presented with a link to the IPA expressing an opinion on road safety you say that “you are not playing.”

Remind me where I did that rog. My reference to IPA was
“IPA certainly is anti-AGW.”

1. I doubt that the other states followed Victorian on road safety. I was there in the 60′s when our NSW state government ran very effective road safety television road safety ads and campaigns. And I was there for the helmets and seatbelt introductions. NSW and Victoria at least moved together on these things. Queensland dragged the chain.

2. Through those years vehicles themselves have become safer to drive with better structure, steering, brakes, lights, and systems.

3. Drivers through that period improved in skills for many years and then, I believe, progressively dropped in skill.

3a. As vehicles increased in braking power and precision of steering drivers, have become to depend upon those abilities to where they advanced the accident risk threashold to the extent that largely nullifies the technology advances.
3b. With our aging population there is a higher percentage of older drivers who have entered the period of brain speed reduction and imaginary performance (this last point is a huge issue).

4. Driving while impaired, term which I pioneered in NZ to highlight the risks of driving while tired in a country which only saw alcohol and speed as the principle causes of accidents, has become a recognised major cause of accidents, particularly on highways.

5. Advertising pushes young drivers self imagined performance skills and abilities way beyond that which is real or safe. Where the military and the aviation industry recognise that “simulated” experiences significantly alter a persons reactions to physical events, the law fails to register that fictional hyperperformance visual experiences weaken a person’s natural self defences by extending their self imagined survival abilities way beyond the physical reality. And high performance car and motorbike manufacturers do not help by making and selling machinery that is capable of speeds up to 3 times higher than the national open road speed limits.

6. 7. 8. I’ll skip these and go onto the point that I would like to highlight…

9. Push bike helmets in their current form are dangerous. In blunt collisions these helmets may be helpful, however in glancing interceptions the performance properties of the materials that these helmets are constructed from combine to “bond” to rough surfaces causing the wearers head to stop moving while the body keeps traveling thereby causing neck injuries equal in severity, or worse than, the potential blunt impact head injuries that they are intended to prevent. I have a friend who is a quadraplegic due to this very effect following a cycle accident on a lunchtime ride before an anticipated round of afternoon business meetings. I am very sensitive to this issue having had a motorbike accident myself in August in which my 40 year old motorbike helmet (purchased at the time when helmets became compulsory) did do its job and protected my head as I tumbled down the road after my bike and I parted company at some speed (70 kph).

At the risk of being grouped with the “anti regulatory” people, I note that in a situation where (as you list) a set of regulatory changes were made it is difficult to disentangle which have an effect and which don’t.

In particular, I would note that lower speed limits are different from the others in that while they have a positive effect on safety over a given period of time driven, they also have a negative effect by extending the time taken for a given trip and by (consequently) forcing more cars on the road at any given time and so increasing traffic.

So, lumping all critics together as “agenda driven” is not exactly a reasoned argument.

What SamB says is correct to s degree. However speeds have not changed very much natioanally in the last 10 years. What can change rapidly is strict numerical enforcement as Victoria experiences. Where the police rigidly enforce the numerical speed limit ie 60 means 60..61 equals afine and loss of points, drivers err on the side of caution by as much as 10 kph. And it does not require all drivers to slow down as the police know. Just 1 in 5 drivers travelling at 10 kph below the speed limit are sufficient to slow an entire corridor by as much. This is a formula for near gridlock. Victoria have been required to fit highway vehicle speed indicators in a number of locations to enable drivers to mentally calibrate their driving in the face of strict limit enforcement.

While the Professor’s point is well taken — there can be no doubt that taken as a corpus, regulation of driver behaviour and vehicle design by the state has reduced road trauma very significantly — the lowest piece of hanging fruit is road contention. Cutting the numbers of vehicles on the roads will cut road trauma even more markedly than the best of regulations.

As those who have read my posts will know I’m in favour of a lot more regulation of road usage but if we could cut road usage — especially in the peak and shoulder periods in urban areas and move hazmat and heavy transport off roads, road trauma would be smaller still.

Interesting. I’d hate to be in a society where people who suffered serious injuries could be refused treatment merely because they’d been reckless. It would be even worse if they had chosen to extend their reckless risk trading to others — such as would be the case if their unrestrained children were travelling with them in the vehicle.

I’m not a fundamentalist on the question of course. Some personal discretion to take risks with one’s own health and safety should be permitted, but just as we ought to have a community standard of health provision so too we shoulod have a community standard for acceptable risk. We don’t allow folks to disregard flood warningf signs or go swimming in flooded creeks because we don’t feel right leaving them to accept the consequences of their stupidity and perhaps putting others at risk.

Once intellectual standards are debased in this way, the damage cannot be contained. Bad arguments are accepted because they produce comfortable conclusions, or because they are put forward by political allies.

This works (in a way) as long as you can assume that all the correct answers are known, having been revealed in some sacred text or another. But they imply…a total incapacity to deal with anything new…Like other movements that began with a radical openness to new ideas, they have become locked into a dogmatic orthodoxy, immune from empirical refutation.

FWIW I whole-heartedly endorse these sentiments with disrespect towards the free-market Right-liberals. Once upon a time I had alot of time for Friedman. But the ultra-liberal doctrine has long since ossified into a stale dogma, providing cover for obvious crooks.

But a not wholly charitable part of me can’t help suspecting that this criticism applies equally well to politically correct Left-liberals. The doctrine of social constructivism has long since run out of steam and is now a degenerate research program. Again, providing cover for charlatans and hustlers.

Which leads to the more general conclusion that liberalism, in its degenerate post-modern form, is now exhausted. Hence a the proliferation of fatuous triumphalism – “End of History”, “Washington Consensus”, “End of Grand Narratives”.

Clearly post-modern liberals feel they have nothing more to learn about the world and that all that remains is (crisis) management, damage control and dampening cognitive dissonance. How the flighty have fallen.

No wonder the PRC is cleaning up so thoroughly, they are under no such delusions.

I looked for Ken N’s most recent post on Catallaxy and it had a nasty personal attack on me. My crime was apparently correcting the falsehoods about science put forward by Ken N’s fellow travellers. It seems to me that for Ken, tribal loyalty trumps science.

The implementation of libertarianism advocacy would lead to little more than anarchy on the roads. Road deaths would skyrocket.

Having said that, there is also the issue of each citizen being entitled to freedom from onerous surveillance by the state. Current rules do not step over that line except for minor issues. Speed zones need to be rationalised. There are too many speed limits (from 40 to 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 100 and 110 at least) and too many changes of these limits along along various roads.

Electronic tagging of cars (to reveal position and speed by satellite) should never be implemented for example as this would be excessive surveillance of the citizen.

Tim – I take it that this was what you call a nasty personal attack:
“As Deltoid cycles through his three subjects: climate change, DDT and deaths in Iraq he occasionally picks up someone who wants to say “Yes, but…” They never finish the second word before the violence begins. I think he must have DDT on a watch list – just wait a minute, he will probably appear here with his trademark character assassination.”
Here is the full post. http://catallaxyfiles.com/2010/12/page/3/

If you are offended, Tim, of course I apologise.
But I am sure you agree that you are not gentle with those who disagree with or want to qualify anything you have said.
I was actually thinking of DDT, remembering the time I commented on your Prospect article here and you jumped in with what seemed to be verbal violence.
And I have no tribal loyalty, as you would know if you read more of my stuff at Catallaxy.
As I have said, we have more robust debates there than JQ does here or you do at your site.

Criticising electronic tagging by anyone who owns a mobile phone doesn’t make sense. You can just as easily be tracked by your phone.

If you do worry about such things then the transponder and information on it can remain your property. If you are electronically charged for use of a road or incur a speed phone all the government needs to know is the bill it will send you. Your information remains private unless you want a third party to verify the charges in the event of a dispute.

Knowing when you take breaks and average speeds are important for regulating safety in trucking. Currently this is done manually anyway.

And Tim, in case you have not been following I repeat (once more, with even more feeling) that I accept the consensus of AGW science. That is, I accept that he earth is warming, that humans are the main cause and that such warming will probably accelerate as positive feedbacks kick in.
Some (actually not many) at Catallaxy take a different view and I have made it clear there that I disagree with them.
“Fellow traveller” is a nice, old fashioned word. Wikipedia says it was originally Russian to describe someone who supported the revolution but failed to join the Communist Party. It seems that Trotsky used it first.
Do you know that it is now used for a gay travel site?

I’m curious how you define “verbal violence” Ken and how someone as you put it “can have the bruises to show for it”. At what point does robust banter become verbal violence?

Having read your comment at the link, the adjectives that come to mind are self-serving, self-indulgent and condescending. You only come here when PrQ says something particularly dopey? Ah the burdens of being a liberal!

Of course, as you say, liberals are nicer because they respect other people.

What can one do but laugh at this? What was the famous remark by Burns?

Thank you, Fran, you are the only one to have recognised that in my Catallaxy post I was trying to be (a bit) funny. And yes, humour is usually a bit self indulgent.

“At what point does robust banter become verbal violence?”
As Louis Armstrong said (about jazz) “if you’ve gotta ask the question, you won’t understand the answer”. BTW I strongly recommend Terry Teachout’s book “Pops” to anyone here interested in music.

I’d call “verbal violence” actual threats, or at the very least, some sort of vilification on the basis of sex, sexual preference, ostensible ethnicity etc …

Merely pointing out robustly that people are mistaken or bring bad faith or poor scholarship to claims is not verbal violence, surely. Though Armstrong may well have been right on jazz, I doubt you can make this claim without specifying a set of criteria. It might be moot if you weren’t using the claim to traduce the standing of another, but of course you are.

Thank you for your advice Fran, but I have already apologised for any offence.
I think that should be sufficient.

It’s not people’s feelings here that are salient, but the integrity of your claim (that you and other cothinkers have suffered “verbal violence” rather than robust critique) given that you haven’t actually resiled from it, but merely expressed your regret in extremis, at its impact.

I doubt you really think this is “sufficient” in any meaningful sense. This is really just a platitude indicating your indifference to the substantive question, which indifference suggests you made the claim out of pique rather than as a result of careful reflection.

One point that hasn’t had much attention is the contributing factor that advances in surgery and medicine would have in the reduction of the road toll. More victims are now saved than they would have been forty years ago.

Ken n, I am not getting involved in what seems to be a misunderstanding but how in the hell can you state that at Catallaxy there are more robust debates than herein? In my opinion JQ provides an alternative forum covering a wide range of subjects.

@Fran Barlow
Fran – I guess you dont even notice you indulge in verbal violence and ideological spin and jargon, far more often that you indulge in robust arguement. Praise be that others have noticed.

@Alice
But its nice to know who you wink at Fran…. so nothing changes and we get your non thinking parrot plagiarisms here… (especially BNC – Barry gets a plug whenever you can manage it…Barry of the “lets all go nuclear” BNC – probably specil protege of MQ management right now)

I tried to make it clear in comment #19, that speeding and alcohol are quite separate (in my mind) to seatbelts and helmets. I support laws on the former category because they affect other people materially. In fact I would be even more harsh than current laws allow.

I confess I don’t understand your waiver scheme. Doesn’t the fact that an individual did not wear a seatbelt constitute an implicit waiver?

Here is what I wrote that Ken N called “verbal violence” and “trademark character assassination” and reckoned was worse than anything you could find at Catallaxy:

Look at the graph here. Malaria did skyrocket in India in the 70s. But not because they cut back on DDT spraying because of pressure from environmentalists. The graph shows that they didn’t cut back on DDT, but dramatically increased its use. So how come malaria increased? Well, the increase in DDT use was in agriculture. This caused the insects to become resistant, so they had to use more DDT to get the same effect. This caused more resistance, so even more DDT was used and so on. The end result was that in the areas where DDT was used in agriculture, the mosquitoes became completely resistant and DDT no longer stopped them from spreading malaria, with the disastrous results shown in the graph.
Restrictions on the agricultural use of DDT saved lives. Ken and the Larouchites will not admit this.

I’ll let readers form their own opinions of his trustworthiness. And Ken, a fake apology is worse than no apology at all.

I agree that Victoria has led the way in improving road safety in Australia. However there is still a lot that can be done. The three factors are drivers, vehicles and the road environment. Drivers under 25 still represent a large percentage of road deaths with speed still a big factor. Vehicles are safer but still more improvement is required. The standard of roads are also improving with better vertical and horizontal geometry and better intersection control (traffic signals and roundabouts). However the single biggest improvement to road safety would be to remove obstructions, mainly trees and utility infrastructure from the 10 metre wide clear zone on each side of rural roads. Potentially this simple act could reduce deaths and casualty accidents by about one third. However in my experience over the past 40 years I have yet to see any political support for any road network manager who tries to take this simple but effective step.

So far, I don’t see anyone accepting John’s invitation …
And I’m no help; although I self-identified as a libertarian in my downier days, I can’t make that claim anymore.
However, if you want an example of a Cato Institute fellow who accepts science, you need look no further than Julian Sanchez.

Henry Farrell cited that post in CT, so I assume John is aware of it. But no other examples spring to mind. Is Julian all alone?

jre – I have many times. Here, in response to JQ’s invitation and then when hc repeated it.invitation Neither acknowledged it.
Dunno what else to say, if you all are determined to repeat the claim that no libertarian accepts the science, I suppose you will.

if you all are determined to repeat the claim that no libertarian accepts the science, I suppose you will.

Vs.

JQ:

I suspect (and hope) there may be quite a few libertarians who aren’t that comfortable with the anti-science wishful thinking displayed on these issues, but prefer not to pick a fight with their fellow libertarians on an issue that may appear peripheral to their own concerns. I would urge any such to think again.

Try again Ken, but this time opt for a real argument rather than a strawman.

jak:
This was the invitation from JQ I was responding to.
“…you could certainly strengthen your case with an unequivocal endorsement of mainstream science on AGW, especially if you presented it at Catallaxy.”

I did as he suggested. He did not acknowledge it.

hc’s repetition of the invitation (after I had done as JQ requested) was

“Ken N I agree with John. How about a post that simply endorses the conventional science of climate change and which clearly identifies the status of delusional theories in relation to the consensus?”

I did the former but declined to do the latter. I try to avoid personal abuse and referring to someone’s views as delusional is not something I will do. It’s enough to say I believe they are wrong.

I am not even sure how we got here. We were having a quite constructive discussion about road safety (remember the heading?) and JQ and I were in agreement on most issues.
Then someone the topic was derailed – I think it was one of those “you libertarians are all the same – you refuse to accept climate change” thrusts.
Foolishly, I responded and it went downhill from there.
Somewhere Deltoid popped up and accused me of being ride to him in what was intended to be a mildly satirical post at Catallaxy a while back. I apologised but he said the apology was false.

I have just remembered something that all this reminds me of. Many years ago, long before most of you were born I suspect, there was a radio programme called “Yes, what”*. It was about a totally out of control class of what sounded like 14 year old boys and a teacher who stood not chance, despite frequent use of the cane sound effect. One kid always got the teacher off the subject he was trying to teach and when the teacher realised what had happened the bell rang.

OK, I’m done. My resolution is that henceforth I will not write anything, comment on or otherwise
refer to AGW. My position is clear and, frankly, I don’t believe it matters in the real world out there what any of us think. Any action will be taken by people much bigger than us and I doubt they will check the blogosphere before deciding.

* I see that the last episode of Yes, what? was made in 1940. I am not quite that old – I heard rebroadcasts in the 50s.

My question to you concerns why you won’t either disavow or warrant your claim against Deltoid/Tim Lambert.

It seems to me that if you take yourself seriously, you are bound to do one or the other. This is not about anyone’s hurt feelings, except, perhaps, yours. It’s about whether you can allow a groundless claim to stand and yet invite others to rely on what you write. You say you libertarians respect other people, but one cannot respect other people if one misrepresents them. One is not releived of this obligation because in the case of those one finds culturally odious.

Fran Barlow, if you are going to correct someone then you could have argued that Ken was wrong by stating bloggers do not move others in the real world. One only has to look at the number of politicians who now have personal websites and blog.

I should certainly mention Julian Sanchez, and will do so when I revise the post. And Jarrah Job, above, is another example of a libertarian who isn’t bound by tribal loyalties, in particular as regards AGW.

Unfortunately, in the case of Ken N, I find a lot of inconsistency between what he presents here and at Catallaxy – I hadn’t noticed the “particularly dopey” reference to me, linked above, but that’s par for the course in my experience.

@Fran Barlow I agree with you on universal healthcare; I don’t won’t to live in a society that refuses care to the reckless. The fact that costs are externalized to the decision maker IS an argument against UH, but such a weak one that all the myriad arguments in favour of it prevail easily. Using UH against the freedom to be reckless is also a non-starter. Society presents the individual with the gift of UH (a gift that cannot be refused), this should not reciprocally obligate the individual to comply with an unreasonable law.

I also agree with you on children. People should be forced to make proper provisions for those not able to adequately judge risks for themselves. I’m afraid I am a bit of a fundamentalist on this libertarian question though. I am against “community standards of acceptable risk” of any kind when it relates only to the safety of the individual concerned. Almost no one seems to agree with me, but it’s a basic moral axiom I hold, and i don’t recognize the right of society to decree otherwise. Even if everyone else in the country disagreed with me, I would not recognise such laws as just. I regard it as an example of the tyranny of majority.

I strongly resent the trend in western society towards “benevolent authoritarianism.” It has created a generation of timid and boring apartment-dwelling children and helicopter parents. Worse still, it causes adults to retain childish characteristics indefinitely, and to never discover their full independence. My childhood was spent barefoot, jumping out of trees into rivers, boogie-boarding down flooded creeks, trekking through taipan snake country days away from medical help. I believe it had a very positive effect on my character. I would gladly exchange a few more spinal injuries for a bit more backbone in this society.

I won’t argue this point anymore. I have no empirical evidence to give, my position is entirely a normative one. I only hope I have made explicitly clear which bullets I am prepared to bite.

@Fran Barlow
I’m not sure whether to thank you or not Fran. I think I liked it better when I thought all “quoters” were magic. You have pierced what should have been an ineffable mystery. The world is now just a little bit less special.

Anyway, I said at Catallaxy the other day that the argument about AGW has become pointless – no-one is going to convince anyone to change his or her mind – here or at Catallaxy or anywhere else.

This is a common device used on Catallaxy, to assume what others think, assume the position of spokesman for “everyone” and then announce in unequivocal terms the position, view or opinion. Those that question the majority groupthink Catallaxy position are not applauded for being courageous, they are invariably met with “verbal violence”.

I put it to you ken that the discussion(s) on Catallaxy has been very persuasive in that it has diminished the quality of the argument to the point of nonexistence. As Sinclair has pointed out on a few occasions his data indicates that Catallaxy gets a wide exposure and I would think that the level of discourse would offend most if not all it’s silent readers. It is certainly is an object lesson in how not to make friends and influence people.

@sam
Sorry Sam, I missed that you had made the distinction; given that you have, the difference between me and you has shrunk somewhat.

Where there is still a gap, I suppose, is that I think that even in the case of choosing not to wear a seatbelt, there is a risk to others due to your choice. For example, if you are a back seat passenger and choose not to wear a seatbelt, then you are exposing any front seat passengers – indeed, anyone else in the vehicle – to the danger of being hit by a flying Sam, should a severe accident occur. Since the seatbelt is available, it seems reasonable to use it to minimise risk of harm to others (due to flying Sams) and to expect a sanction if you do not wear an available seatbelt.